The DCI, a joint venture of the studios, did not originally anticipate the 3-D boom that has grown out of digital cinema and was silent on 3-D technical specifications. As a result, incompatible 3-D systems have proliferated.
Studios releasing a film in 3-D have since had to create as many as seven different 3-D digital cinema "packages."
Digital cinema consultant David Reisner said that Sunday's announcement, which is a one-page addendum to the DCI specs, would put the business on notice that there should be "only one format for distribution, not multiple formats for distribution."
Which format wins out, though, remains to be seen.
DCI also announced that Cinecert had been selected as the first testing company for so-called DCI compliance. More from Variety:
The selection of Cinecert as DCI's testing company moves the industry a step closer to answering one of the major questions remaining for d-cinema: Who will decide whether a product can be called "DCI-compliant"?
The question is vital to manufacturers, because there is little market for non-DCI-compliant d-cinema hardware, and exhibitors need assurances their expensive d-cinema hardware will work as advertised.
DCI had contracted with a German research institute, the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits, to develop tests for DCI compliance. Cinecert has a six-month contract to complete the work Fraunhofer started and to develop a set of testing procedures and standard tests. Once Cinecert has finished, DCI will choose testing entities.
In other announcements, DCI has published a list of errata corrections to the original specification and Sony and Warner Bros will take over technical and management responsibility from Paramount and Universal, so expect Al Barton to have even less free time than he already has from October onwards.
At the same event, WB's CTO Chris Cookson gave what sounds like an excellent keynote advocating a baseline capture of 4K for archives.
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